The Green Party has announced a new policy to make walking and cycling to school safer.

We will invest $200 million in new transport infrastructure so kids can cycle and walk to school safely and to ease congestion on New Zealand’s roads.

Our aim is to get most kids walking or cycling to school again by making it a safe and pleasant experience.

A generation ago, most kids walked or cycled to school. Today, only a third do When kids walk or bike or ride their scooter to school, it’s good for their health, it’s good for their learning, it eases congestion and it’s good for the environment.

I agree with the aim of the policy. Far better to tackle obesity by making it easier for kids to cycle to school, than trying to ban large easter eggs and tax certain foods.

Allocate $50m a year for four years to build modern, convenient walking and cycling infrastructure around schools: separating kids and other users from road traffic, giving a safe choice for families

The $50 million a year seems a figure plucked out of thin air. I’d rather a smaller sum spent on say a couple of dozen schools and measure the impact it has on cycling rates before committing to a larger spend.

The latest research shows that we can get up to $20 of gains for every dollar spent. That’s a billion dollars of gains for each year’s $50 million investment.

First of all it isn’t 20 to 1. Eric Crampton points out they’re comparing benefits in 2051 to the cost today, not taking into account the cost of money over the next 40 years. At even a 5% discount rate $1 today is $7 in 2050. And the benefit to cost ratios they cite range from 6:1 to 20:1 so in fact they may not provide a net benefit. As I said, it could well be beneficial, but if it really was a 20:1 benefit – would have happened by now.

A key is whether the rate of kids cycling to school will increase as they have assumed. Best to test it, before you spend $200 million.

The other issue is paying for it. They say they’ll divert money from roads. They should be more specific and say explicitly which current road project they will scrap. To be credible it has to be one that has not yet started construction.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2014 at 7:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics.
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Sounds excellent in theory but may be difficult in practice. It will be difficult to provide extensive safer cycling. And if it’s at the cost of road access to schools it could create havoc, especially on wet days and in the winter.

I also wonder about the cost. They are talking about a cost of something like $38m to put separated cycle lanes just on one (major) route through central Dunedin and that doesn’t include the cost of replacement parking – the cycle lanes could take out up to 400 car parks.

Cycle promoters say that if there are more cyclists then less parks and less road will be required. But that’s only true for good days. Roads have to be designed to cater for peak traffic, and that still has to be taken into account, especially for winter and wet and windy weather,

I have no idea why this is even mooted as being any sort of an idea let alone one with merits. Why the biking or walking to school has assumed such a lofty status I’ll never know. All I can imagine is it is the nostalgia as surely it isn’t because of the perceived “exercise” aspect. As far as exercise goes, the common-sense parent (most of them) ensure their children have a range of activities outside of school to keep them healthy and engaged and this includes bike riding a pastime that all communities have excellent facilities for already.

NZ is is a very different world than when I and many here went to school. In the main parents of school age children are working and they are time poor. The safe and timely delivery of their child to school is one task off the list, and I have no idea why a child should be subjected to the notion they should bike to school.

Kids making their own way to school took a dramatic downturn when that scum who will spend the rest of his life in jail kidnapped and killed Theresa Cormack all those years ago. Traffic is now very heavy on roads , ironically in part because of parents dropping kids to school. In the neighbourhood where I live many kids do walk to school. Or scooter, and a few kids bike. But on cold wet rainy mornings kids get dropped off. parents and the schools do not want cold wet children trying to learn. Have the greens not thought about the cold wet children??? And their inability to learn if they are cold and wet. The greens just don’t care about children trying to learn when they are cold and wet.

Reality is given the safety concerns of scum predators, and increased traffic and children being wet and cold ( which the greens don’t care about), it is going to be difficult to overcome the desire of parents to drop their kids at school

I think danger from other road users is one of the least of the reasons why kids don’t walk or bike to school. It’s more the false perception that there is a homicidal paedophile lurking around every corner which prompts parents to drive their kids. Dispel that idea if you can, Green Party, and you will have a lot more kids walking and riding for no cost at all.

In our towns and cities, schools have usually been built as part of the the rest of the community – not too far from shops and along the route that public transport goes past. This means there is no spare roading left to fence off exclusively for child cyclists, without it affecting other road users.

It is estimated (can’t remember where I read it) that 20% of peak hour traffic is education-related – getting people to class.

So here’s a better solution….

How about changing the start time for school so that it does not clash with the morning rush hour traffic. Then the children will have the roads to themselves, achieving the Greens goal of a “safe and pleasant experience”.

‘….A key is whether the rate of kids cycling to school will increase as they have assumed. Best to test it, before you spend $200 million….”

I’d certainly think so – as the world is over populated and people should have fewer children is the other message the Greens keep giving us.

The Greens are just using ‘think of the kids’ to get their cycle lanes in place for future petrol tax increases!

And when more people start using the cycle lanes due to ‘petrol unaffordability’ – the greens will then announce the next best cheap option – “Put the saftey barriers further out into the roads – more people are seeing the sense in exercising . The Nation is getting healthier thanks to us!” Typical lefties!

I like Mike Hosking’s response to this. He says just get the parents to start parenting –just tell the kids to walk or bike to school and no more hand holding in SUVs. No cost involved !!
I presume the “walking bus” idea is still in place in some areas –do the Greens acknowledge them and do they help obesity issues ?

How ironic that the Party that is so desperate to introduce our kids to every drug imaginable (Cannabis dealers in schools are “entrepreneurs” ..apparently) is all of a sudden so concerned about their health and welfare..

Thinking back to the first primary school I attended (mid 50s, up Gisborne way) there was an adjacent paddock where a few of the rural pupils used to leave the horses they used for transport. Not pony club calibre….just old hacks with two or three kids apiece riding bareback.

History may yet repeat if the Greens succeed in trashing modern standards of living.

Putting exact numbers on a scenario 40 years out is pointless. The world will have changed so much by then that any prediction we make will be ruined by incorrect assumptions.

If we want to encourage cycling the best way is to have cycle paths completely separate from normal roads. I’m aware of two examples. The “railway reserve” in Nelson is a gravel trail that runs most of the way from Richmond to the city center. And in Christchurch there is a sealed cycle track that runs from Riccarton road north to Papanui. These type of tracks don’t have to duplicate the road network; just one or two per city can make a huge difference in keeping cyclists off main arterial routes.

Regardless of the fuzzy numbers, this is generally a good idea. The actual exercise that kids will get will be relatively small but gets them in the habit and likely more engaged once at school. But one of the best things it will do is reduce the number of cars on the road around peak times, a significant amount of peak traffic is aggravated by Mums and Dads dropping off and picking up their kids from school.

How hard can it be to paint a white line down a footpath, use a stencil to paint a symbol of a bike and put some signs up saying bike lane?
This is what we have in the Republic of Devonport and with courtesy shown between cyclists and walkers, works very well.
There is no need for specialised cycle paths but certainly when planning new roads wider foot/ cycling paths should be included.

Problem is caused by schools being too big, in the wrong places i.e. in old housing area’s when housing has expanded to other area’s, lack of decent access to the school for vehicles, too many “mothers” going to work rather than nurturing their offspring all so they can have oversea’s holidays and lots of latte’s.

Tauranga is a prime example of education foolishness that bigger schools are better and kids need to be driven, bussed for miles into those schools.

Our roads are chocked up this year with schoolie drivers and their kids.

Pain in the arse for every business driver, truckie and service people.

When my kids were wanting to bike to school they were not allowed to ride on footpaths, and were not allowed to ride on the road until they were +/- 11 years old. It was considered that children were not sufficiently aware of speed relationships between themselves and motor vehicles.
So Mum had to walk them. We didn’t have a car.
I’m sure I have seen a photo of ranks of bike stands being removed from a school somewhere -

I live next to a Primary School.
There are almost as many scooters on parade most days than Remmers Tractors.
Good cycle training.
Mothers come with the scooterers, and scoot off down the road when the child is in school.
Some mothers are as good as the children.

Than.
Palmy Nth has a cycle track that will soon be about 35 kms long that runs along the river From Ashurst thru to the West side of town.
its dual use, part sealed part lime and dual use so runners and dog walkers as well. Its awesome.
About THE only good thing the fuc*ing useless PNCC has done for the city.

A good and inevitable policy, dangerous car drivers issues should also be addressed [make drivers licence tests twice as hard]. The feeling of insecurity of cyclists [one side of the story] is a big impediment to cycling.

The only obstacle preventing children from walking to schools is parental initiative. It should not be forgotten that vast numbers of children do walk to school, particularly in the older suburbs. Part of the change in Auckland is parents choosing to take their children to schools other than the local schools which is entirely their right. Additionally, children riding with parents to school is a personal choice issue invariably enjoyed by both the children and parents. Something not factored in here is children travelling by bus to school and invariably. Attempting to tie this in with obesity is also bloody nonsense.

“They’ve tried painting lines in Dunedin and it hasn’t worked. Still hardly anyone uses the cycle lanes most of the time, and still there’s still the occasional bad accident.”

Oh well, Darwin’s theories at work in Dunedin. Hardly a surprise given how people vote down there.Personally I think cyclists should be ticketed if they use the road where there is a cycle lane, just like jaywalkers should be more often too.

bc- Are you seriously trying to argue that your beloved Gweens AREN’T Pro-Cannabis?

Pete George- “They’ve tried painting lines in Dunedin and it hasn’t worked. Still hardly anyone uses the cycle lanes most of the time,”
That’s because Dunedin is such a God awful cold dump. Nobody wants to put snow chains on their bicycle…

As has been pointed out to you many times before, the greens see drug abuse (and this includes alcohol) as a health issue.
They see drug use as dangerous for children and would never legalise the sale of drugs to minors – so I find your statements saying that the greens want children to be taking drugs as one of your stupidest statements yet. This is saying something as you do make a lot of stupid statements!

Oh and they are not my “beloved Gweens”. I have not ever voted for them and never will, as I do not agree with 99% of their policies. The one policy I do agree with though is their drug policy. Treating drug abuse a health issue seems very sensible to me. Spending money to get people off addictive drugs rather than spending money throwing them in prisons makes a lot of sense.

I wish other political parties would have a similar approach, but it is much easier to cry ‘lock them up’ and appeal to unthinking voters (I’m talking about you here longknives!) than get any sensible discussion going.

Oh and calling them Gweens seems incredibly childish to me, but I can’t say that I’m surprised.

Then again perhaps Wussel’s printing press will be in full operation, but seriously it’s one thing for the Greens to bandy about multi-million dollar bribes (whether they have merit or not) but it’s poor that the media don’t make the Greens explain where the money is coming from to fund their polices.

Also the media should be asking Labour whether they would support such policies (after all it is Labour that would be the major partner of any Coalition deal between the two and as well as Labour having to cost up their proposed policies it seems they now also have to cover the costs of Green Party policies. I would imagine their combined policy costs to NZ would be quite alarming.

The Green Party recognises that:
•A drug-free lifestyle is the healthiest;
•All drugs can cause harm, regardless of their legal status.
•Not all drug use is problematic.
•Some current government policies do not reduce harm but rather create a further set of problems.

1.Immediate Steps
•More funding for drug education programmes in schools and communities.
•Establish a Ministerial Advisory Group on Drug Education to evaluate and improve drug education. (Greens initiated the drug education best practise guidelines published by the Ministry of Youth Development).
•Prioritise the prosecution of crimes such as violent offences ahead of personal cannabis possession.
•Enable doctors to prescribe cannabis products for severely ill patients.

2. Medium Term Steps
•Ban broadcast alcohol advertising and direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals.
•Introduce a legal age limit of 18 years for personal cannabis use.
•Define in law the limits on growing cannabis for personal use.
•Ensure it remains an offence to drive while under the influence of cannabis.
•Support strong integration of, and better resourcing for, mental health and substance misuse services.
•Place tighter controls on highly addictive prescription drugs.

3. Longer Term Steps
•Review all drug-related legislation to ensure consistency and a harm reduction approach.
•Monitor and evaluate the effects of the removal of personal penalties for cannabis use, drug education programmes, drug addiction treatment programmes, and pharmaceutical controls.

$200 million to back into time!. Roads will clogged with cyclists instead of cars. I note there is no suggestion of making cyclists contribute to the cost…just slug the poor old rate and taxpayer and lets hit the motorists harder eh! This nonsense is being promoted by town planners and creeping into local Councils via United Nations Agenda 21. and ICLEI. They actually don’t need the Green Party as its being done by stealth through local bodies and the R.M.A
In Hamilton, the majority ( 900 in fact)of our suburban streets either are- or are about to become,40K speed Zones! In the Draft district 10yr plan, it states that in the City in all instances cyclists, pedestrians and public transport will take precedence over cars! All new buildings will have to provide ‘end of journey cycle facilities’ whatever that means. There are pages and pages of this kind of proposed nonsense
Our City is dying! These restrictions will firmly nail the coffin shut. In order to get people back into the City, Council is giving favourable conditions to the builders of high rise ‘compact’ housing which doesn’t incidentally have to provide car parks. Apparently people living in this central city Utopia will cycle, walk, or catch the bus without the need for cars!
The Sustainability movement has morphed from conservation into a fanatical state akin to a religion and want to change our lifestyle completely. Bikes are just the start. The reality is ..you cannot make cycling safe. Its like King Canute trying to hold back the sea. You cannot pit skin and bone against a one ton metal machine that can’t stop on a pinhead. Check out United Nations Agenda 21 and ICLEI to see the kind of Cities these people want and how it will restrict your freedom of choice. Find out if your Council subscribes to it . It is not the Kiwi way and it is coming your way..with or without the Greens.

Niggly if I recall correctly they said the $ would come out of the National Land Transport Fund.

I’m betting they are either eyeing up a couple of highway projects they can kill or some kind of massive additional carbon tax or both.

The absurdity of the greens policy (and at the risk of lighting the touch paper on a perennial controversial issue) at one in the same time these idiots argue separated infrastructure is essential to safety but helmets aren’t. To be clear, I make no judgment on the merits of each, it’s just there appears to be a massive logic disconnect in their approach.

I have to admit, being on the roads between 8.30-9 a.m. and 3-3.30 pm around here (where there are many schools) is a nightmare. We call it witching hour, and make sure we are off the roads at such time.

It is not just the fact of the mothers picking up their children – it is the way they seem more content to check little johnny’s drawing or break up their children’s fights, leaning over into the back seats, whilst pulling out of their parking spaces and driving without looking where they are going.

The kids would probably be safer walking.

I believe the amount of parents taking their children to school increased dramatically the year Teresa Cormack was abducted and murdered whilst on her way to school in Napier. It was a wake up call for how vulnerable children were.

•Ensure it remains an offence to drive while under the influence of cannabis.

Apply fucking science to this.

1 Mildly stoned drivers are safer than sober drivers……
2 Do we need another excuse for the cops to fuck with around two hundred citizens to apprehend one drink driver?

The greens should have •Review all drug-related legislation to ensure consistency and a harm reduction approach. As the first point.
Actual science on the relative harmful effects of drugs. Not the Knee jerk kids are taking mdma so it must be banned without quantifying the relative risks to other recreational drugs .

Alcohol is a killer and should be far harder to obtain than pot. xtc. lsd. plastic pot etc.

In the diagram above both individual and societal factors are considered. It may come to a surprise to many readers that LSD and ecstasy are one of the least dangerous drugs. Notice also that Alcohol is the highest rated dangerous drug and that tobacco is on seventh place just below Cocaine (Both alcohol and tobacco are not even considered a drug by many people, including, sadly, politicians). However, heroin, crack and metamfetamine tops the list for the most dangerous drugs when only individual factors are considered, alcohol then dropping down to a fourth place amongst the most dangerous drugs. So, even when the obvious societal effects due to the widespread use of alcohol are not considered (alcohol rates very high, unsurprisingly, on “family adversities” and “environmental damage”) it still is the fourth most dangerous drug.

In the main, parents don’t let their kids cycle to school because they want to see their kids walk through the school gates and not be apprehended along the way by nutters. Same reason for picking them up after school.

What I can’t get my head around on this topic is the situation where as a parent I am not legally allowed to leave a kid at home unsupervised while I go off to the pokies but am encouraged to send them off walking or on a bike unsupervised for the period of the trip from home to school. Not very consistent.

Cheers Yogi and BC, the opening salvos of reprioritising the existing transport budget, what other changes to roading infrastructure do they have in store for NZ I wonder …?

I just can’t understand the Greens, if I were them I would support more roading infrastructure development, but as the price for Govt (of the day) support include dedicated cycle-ways added as part of the roading upgrade project (and bus lanes were appropriate). Eventually they will all interconnect (might takes years and decades but it’s a start).

If would make both car (bus, truck etc) and cycle travelling safer (and conversely less of the Govt budget spent on hospital treatment and recovery for accident victims etc). Good for tourism and good for locals/visitors wanting to see more of the scenery.

Unfortunately the greens are right. AGW science says we have around twenty years at our present rate of co2 emissions to wean civilization of fossil fuels.
We have to get off the fossil fuel addiction or economics, right and left and all the other political diversions will become irrelevant as we spend more and more gdp on the cost of weather related disasters.

“In the main, parents don’t let their kids cycle to school because they want to see their kids walk through the school gates and not be apprehended along the way by nutters”

You could believe that, or you could look at survey after survey that says the number one reason parents drop their kids off at school is because they don’t feel it’s safe for them to walk or cycle due to traffic. The irony is that by dropping them off they’re contributing to the problem – a vicious cycle, should you like puns.

Thus, this is a sensible policy – better cycling and walking infrastructure is normally the best way to improve all modes of transport, as it gets more kids walking and less parents driving, freeing up the roads for those for whom commuting in a car or bus is the most efficient use of their time.

And yeah, parents can walk or cycle with their kids if they’re really afraid of big, bad, extremely unlikely, nutters.

Regarding the costings, this is something that should have been remedied, however DPF is wrong to suggest the adjustment should be 7:1 – that only applies to year 40. All other years are adjusted a lot less than that. i.e. the actual adjustment is something like 2.5:1. Thus, you’d expect something on the order of 2.5:1 to 8:1 benefits, if one gives the Green’s the benefit of the doubt.

I would agree that the amount specified appears arbitrary – I suspect this is because they want to allow simple solutions (green paint + signage) where possible to get things started, with separated solutions where most needed.

Funding it comes from dropping some of the roading projects that have extremely poor cost-benefit analyses and don’t address the issues they’re trying to solve (Puhoi-Wellsford for example) by replacing them with cheaper options that actually fix the issue (bypassing Warkworth).

The Green’s generally know what they’re talking about when it comes to transport policy (along with their drugs policies). I certainly don’t agree with a bunch of their policy, but these ones, they’re normally pretty good.

Since we banned pot it has become easily available. Its easier for kids to buy pot than it is to buy piss. Your logic at work here would result in alchol becomeing more of a problem. We tried it remember banning piss resulted in a crime explosion.

Idiot try to learn from history . Prohibition empowers criminal activity. The black power and mongrel mob receive most of their funding from supplying tinnys. Better the state taxes the revenue than it funding the crims and the black market.

There is absolutely no way the Greens have costed that policy, in accordance with reality on the ground. So in essence they are offering to throw money at it. Greens are hopeless with numbers & implementation.